The use of virtual machines requires an ability to scale backup processes to accommodate multiple virtual machines on a single platform. To ensure a consistent backup of a plurality of virtual machines on a platform may require a resource intensive process including: quiescing all virtual machines, snapshotting all virtual machines, snapshotting one or more storage devices, and creating backup images by reading consistent data of the snapshots. Snapshots may not be released until backup images are created. This may increase a duration of time that a snapshot is maintained. A hypervisor may maintain a delta of the changed data for a virtual disk while a snapshot of the virtual disk is maintained. When a snapshot is released a hypervisor may merge the delta of changed data back into the virtual disk. This merge process may be a resource intensive operation (e.g., have significant I/O (Input/Output) demands). If multiple virtual machines are present, multiple snapshots may be maintained until backup images are complete. This may increase the duration that each snapshot is maintained and may increase a size of a delta of changed virtual disk data maintained. Thus, when multiple snapshots are released for multiple virtual machines, a merge process for corresponding deltas of changed virtual disk data may have significant resource impact (e.g., I/O and CPU usage).
In view of the foregoing, it may be understood that there may be significant problems and shortcomings associated with current data backup technologies.